Pacing: inexplicably good

post by KatjaGrace · 2023-01-02T08:30:10.158Z · LW · GW · 7 comments

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8 comments

Pacing—walking repeatedly over the same ground—often feels ineffably good while I’m doing it, but then I forget about it for ages, so I thought I’d write about it here.

I don’t mean just going for an inefficient walk—it is somehow different to just step slowly in a circle around the same room for a long time, or up and down a passageway.

I don’t know why it would be good, but some ideas:

  1. It’s good to be physically engaged while thinking for some reason. I used to do ‘gymflection’ with a friend, where we would do strength exercises at the gym, and meanwhile be reflecting on our lives and what is going well and what we might do better. This felt good in a way that didn’t seem to come from either activity alone. (This wouldn’t explain why it would differ from walking though.)
  2. Different working memory setup: if you pace around in the same vicinity, your thoughts get kind of attached to the objects you are looking at. So next time you get to the green tiles say, they remind you of what you were thinking of last time you were there. This allows for a kind of repeated cycling back through recent topics, but layering different things into the mix with each loop, which is a nice way of thinking. Perhaps a bit like having additional working memory.

I wonder if going for a walk doesn’t really get 1) in a satisfying way, because my mind easily wanders from the topic at hand and also from my surrounds, so it less feels like I’m really grappling with something and being physical, and more like I’m daydreaming elsewhere. So maybe 2) is needed also, to both stick with a topic and attend to the physical world for a while. I don’t put a high probability on this detailed theory.

7 comments

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comment by localdeity · 2023-01-02T09:56:06.068Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

There have been studies on the subject, having people walk or not (and walk in varying conditions) and measuring their performance on some intellectual or creative task, and concluding that (a) walking does help and (b) the type of walk probably matters.  First citation I found: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xlm-a0036577.pdf

Four experiments demonstrate that walking boosts creative ideation in real time and shortly after. In Experiment 1, while seated and then when walking on a treadmill, adults completed Guilford’s alternate uses (GAU) test of creative divergent thinking and the compound remote associates (CRA) test of convergent thinking. Walking increased 81% of participants’ creativity on the GAU, but only increased 23% of participants’ scores for the CRA. In Experiment 2, participants completed the GAU when seated and then walking, when walking and then seated, or when seated twice. Again, walking led to higher GAU scores. Moreover, when seated after walking, participants exhibited a residual creative boost. Experiment 3 generalized the prior effects to outdoor walking. Experiment 4 tested the effect of walking on creative analogy generation. Participants sat inside, walked on a treadmill inside, walked outside, or were rolled outside in a wheelchair. Walking outside produced the most novel and highest quality analogies. The effects of outdoor stimulation and walking were separable. Walking opens up the free flow of ideas, and it is a simple and robust solution to the goals of increasing creativity and increasing physical activity.

comment by TekhneMakre · 2023-01-02T08:45:36.722Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Another hypothesis: walking turns on your brain's "we're going somewhere, let's keep track of where we've been / we are / we're going" mode. But since you're not going anywhere, and your path is very simple / doesn't require any high-level/deliberative adjustment or attention, that "journey mode" energy is purposed towards your thinking journey.

comment by RHollerith (rhollerith_dot_com) · 2023-01-02T14:12:15.777Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Slightly related: people tend not to like it when I pace in their presence for more than a minute. My hypothesis is that it feels to them like I am asserting dominance over the room (more so than if I were to dominate the conversation, less so than if I were to issue a string of commands).

Skilled speakers often pace or wander among the audience, which is evidence for my hypothesis because audiences tend to want the speaker to dominate the room when they have come to the room to hear a speech.

comment by MikkW (mikkel-wilson) · 2023-01-02T20:08:51.134Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

When going for a walk, you are somewhat far from your desk, but if you're pacing somewhere around your house, your desk is nearby. This means that it is quite low friction to switch between working and pacing.

comment by Gunnar_Zarncke · 2023-01-02T23:28:08.846Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I have been walking back and forth a 50m trail for hours as part of a meditation exercise. It was quite a deliberate effort. I concentrated on the movement of my hip bone and learned a lot from it. But I can't say that it is "inexplicably good."

comment by brambleboy · 2024-12-18T00:42:14.439Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Pacing is a common stimming behavior. Stimming is associated with autism / sensory processing disorder, but neurotypical people do it too.

comment by jacquesthibs (jacques-thibodeau) · 2023-01-03T05:29:27.100Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

When I look for a place to stay, I actually specifically try to find a place where I have enough room to pace around the house/apartment in a somewhat straight line back and forth.

I also really prefer offices that have these sections where I can pace around while thinking (especially when it's isolated from others so I don't distract them). I think anyone in EA who is looking to purchase or design offices should keep this in mind.